


Settled

by helloearthlings



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 16:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11421537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “How often do you and Merlin have sex?”“Morgana!”





	Settled

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little fluffy plot bunny I had last night, that incorporates an idea I'd wanted to write for awhile. Hopefully I'll be starting a long fic this weekend, but I'm about to work a seven-day stretch sooo....maybe not. Hope you like this, though! Please comment to let me know what you think!

“How often do you and Merlin have sex?”

Arthur nearly choked on his coffee. Hastily wiping his mouth with a napkin, he glared at his sister from across the table, and then his eyes swept the perimeter of the coffee shop, making sure no bystanders heard her.

Morgana, naturally, wore a perfectly innocent and expectant expression as if she had just asked what the weather was going to be like today.

“ _Morgana_!”

“What?” Morgana blinked, as completely unaware of the concept of privacy as ever. Well, Arthur’s privacy, at the very least. “It’s an honest question. Now that we’re both married and middle-aged –”

“Thirty-three is _not_ middle aged –”

“– I just wanted to compare,” Morgana finished smoothly. “I mean, you hear about married couples never having sex and I just wanted to make sure I’m not experiencing lesbian bed death. Sophia and I used to fuck a lot more often, you know.”

“Thank you for informing me,” Arthur muttered, glancing distastefully down at his half-eaten bagel that would now probably never be finished, the psychological torment of this conversation too nauseating. “Why does it matter? So you have sex less. Big deal – just decide to have sex more. Congratulations, you’ve fixed your problem.”

“Arthur,” Morgana’s eyes sparkled and Arthur felt his willpower degrade just a little bit more. “I just want to make sure I’m not panicking about nothing, and who else would I be comfortable enough asking than my baby brother?”

“The fact that you _are_ comfortable asking your baby brother is a little disconcerting,” Arthur grumbled, but had basically already resigned himself to telling her whatever she wanted to hear so he could escape this conversation as quickly as possible. “….I dunno, we have sex like…once a week? Once every two weeks?”

Morgana’s eyes widened and she let out a small laugh. Arthur’s hackles rose, immediately on the defensive.

“What?” He scowled at her, again scanning the coffee shop for eavesdroppers, but at least Morgana wasn’t being extremely loud about this.

“Well, I’m definitely not worried about lesbian bed death anymore,” Morgana laughed, pressing her fingers to her lips to stop herself. “Well, for _me_ anyway.”

Arthur kept scowling. “We’ve been married for three years. _You’ve_ been married for eight months. There’s a difference.”

Morgana raised her hands in mock defense. “I’m not judging!”

“…How often do you and Sophia have sex?” Arthur relented, hating himself for asking the question.

“Oh, four or five times a week,” Morgana dropped in casually, as if that didn’t sound utterly exhausting. Arthur gaped at her.

“You’re worried that _four or five times a week_ is lesbian bed death?”

And then, a moment later, another thought occurred to him. “You used to have sex _more than that_?”

Morgana grinned mischievously. “Back when we first start dating, it was a few times a day.”

Arthur kept up the façade of glaring, but he was starting to feel a little more uncomfortable with this now. Even when he and Merlin first got together nearly eight years ago, they’d never had sex more than four times a week. Had they?

Morgana seemed to realize Arthur’s inner turmoil and reached forward to touch his hand. “Arthur, I’m not saying it’s bad that you don’t. I mean, you could always talk to a marriage counselor or –”

“We don’t need a fucking _marriage counselor_ ,” Arthur sneered, though his heart beat a bit faster. “Merlin and I are fine. It’s not like we…we spend every day together, Morgana! And every night, too, even if we’re not making love. I sincerely doubt there’s two people in the world closer than Merlin and I, Morgana. We do everything together. Every day, we take our stupid dog for walks in the park and hold hands. Your marriage can’t be having problems if you do _that_.”

Morgana, to her credit, relented without even a show of a smirk. “I didn’t say you had problems, baby brother. But I know that if _I_ was only having sex every couple weeks, I’d be a miserable wreck.”

“Exactly,” Arthur halfway snarled at her, unable to control his temper, just like when they were children and did _not_ ask invasive questions about each other’s sex lives. “ _You_ would because _you’re_ a nymphomaniac.”

“Arthur!” Morgana glared up at him, but Arthur had already committed to being an asshole and, standing up, put down a few notes for a tip before storming out of the café and into the streets of London’s mid-afternoon sun, huffing and squirming with a lack of comfortability.

Arthur didn’t _like_ this feeling.

* * *

 

Arthur was greeted when he came in the door to his flat by Tuna jumping up on his legs and barking his tiny little head off. Arthur usually would’ve picked him up and played with him, but he was in a bad enough mood that the barking was more of a nuisance than an endearing new puppy activity.

“Down,” Arthur shoved at Tuna, who whined when he realized that Arthur was upset with him. Immediately, Arthur felt a flash of guilt and picked up his puppy. Tuna barked happily, nuzzling his wet nose into Arthur’s neck, licking his cheek with the fervor that only a six month old puppy could.

“Hey,” Merlin’s head poked out of the kitchen, his hair messy and haphazard. Arthur felt a rush of his usual affection for his husband – which obviously meant that their life was fine, their sex life was fine, _whatever_. “Just putting the leftover casserole in the microwave. How’s Morgana?”

“Annoying,” Arthur grumbled, hoping that Merlin would ask him what the matter was. Unfortunately, Merlin didn’t give him an opening, too preoccupied with working the microwave apparently, and so Arthur kicked off his trainers and had to set the dog down in order to undo the top two buttons of his shirt.

Then he headed into the kitchen to wrap his arms around his husband’s waist and kiss the back of his neck.

Merlin laughed, turning around to kiss Arthur lightly on the mouth. “Dinner will be ready in five minutes. Then we can go down to the park with Tuna, yeah? Can you go set out the Frisbee?”

“Very domestic,” Arthur said, not meaning for it to be out loud. Merlin, rolling his eyes at him said, “That’s because we’re domestic people.”

Arthur tried to make his feet move toward the hall closet to get the dog toys, but he stopped short, turning around and feeling heat rise to his cheeks, “Morgana thinks we don’t sleep together enough.”

Merlin turned away from the countertop with an odd, wrinkled expression on his face. “And how does Morgana know how much we sleep together?”

“I told her,” Arthur said grumpily, grabbing Tuna off the floor again so he could have something to do with his hands. Tuna, not realizing that anything was the matter, resumed licking Arthur’s face. “She wanted to know if she and Sophia were experiencing lesbian bed death, but according to her, _we_ have lesbian bed death.”

Merlin raised an eyebrow at him, but not a judgmental one, just a slightly exasperated and loving one. “Well, we _can’t_ have lesbian bed death seeing as how we’re not, you know, lesbians. And besides, comparing yourself to Morgana has never gotten anything productive done in your life. And no matter how much your father confuses your names in his old age, the two of you are _not_ actually the same person.”

“I know that,” Arthur muttered petulantly into Tuna’s fur as Merlin crossed the kitchen, first to kiss the dog and then Arthur, showing Arthur’s true ranking in the world of Merlin’s affection.

“Arthur,” Merlin’s eyes danced with amusement. “I can remember back in uni when the Pendragons were nothing more to me than the on-campus legends whose father was the dean, and all of the students had nicknames for you that they used behind your back. You remember yours?”

“Didn’t they alternate between Poncy Git and Stick in the Mud?” Arthur frowned, still more than a little bitter about that.

“And Morgana was the Slutty Vampire,” Merlin confirmed with a knowing look in his eye. “Do you think that the Stick in the Mud and Slutty Vampire have the same personality, let alone sex drive? I don’t think so.”

“I’m still angry that the first thing you ever heard about me was that I was a git,” Arthur felt the need to point out.

“And yet I married you anyway,” Merlin reminded him. “And bought this stupid, obnoxious dog that look so adorable in your arms right now that I want to take a picture.”

“Go ahead,” Arthur tried to hide a smile as Merlin pulled away from him to grab his camera phone. Arthur buried his nose in Tuna’s first, the dog snuggling happily up against him.

Obviously, Merlin could tell that Arthur was still upset, for he gently took the dog out of Arthur’s arms and deposited him on the ground so that he could wrap his arms around Arthur. As Merlin’s hands ran up and down the length of his back, Arthur remembered why he liked being married to him so much.

“Arthur, we take our dog for walks in the park every night. We go to a new museum every month. We haven’t spent a dozen nights apart in the three years we’ve been married. We don’t have to fuck every night to have a healthy relationship.”

“I don’t like it when you call it fucking,” Arthur reminded him, curling the fabric of Merlin’s t-shirt in one of his hands.

“Yeah?” Merlin pulled away, eyes dancing with light amusement. “What do you wanna call it, Arthur?”

“Making love,” Arthur bit out petulantly, a phrase that he’d always adored and used whenever possible, even when Merlin made fun of him for being proper and traditional. But sex with Merlin couldn’t just be covered by the word _fucking._ That wasn’t enough to encompass it.

Merlin beamed at him, kissing him on the forehead. “Wanna go _make love_ now?”

Arthur was about to say _yes please_ when the microwave behind them started beeping incessantly and Merlin broke away from him with a laugh.

“Foiled again,” he grinned as he pulled the steaming casserole out and set it on the table. “Alright – dinner first, then we take Tuna out, and _then_ we make love. Agreed?”

“I should probably call Morgana somewhere in there and apologize for calling her a nymphomaniac,” Arthur said shamefacedly and Merlin made a face at him, clearly saying he disapproved. “Though maybe I’ll wait for her to call me since she _started it_ with lesbian bed death.”

“Hey, Arthur?” Merlin came closer to put an arm around Arthur’s neck and kiss him again. “To quote the mighty Scott Pilgrim…I’m in lesbians with you.”

Arthur laughed and pulled his husband closer to him, their dog yapping happily at their feet, begging to be fed bits of casserole.

Nothing at all wrong with that.


End file.
